This year’s excellently-attended European Forest Products conference in Lisbon over March 3 – 5 rolled out in an environment of increasing regional regulation, erratic international tariff announcements from the US altering conditions in real time and the changing shape of the market through mergers and acquisitions.
Smurfit Westrock shut out the CEO awards, with Tony Smurfit taking Global CEO of the Year and Saverio Meyer taking European CEO of the Year, in no small part due to their vanguard position in the run of M&A activities over the last year.
Meyer was a long-time executive leader at Smurfit Kappa Holdings, which took over WestRock in the middle of 2024, creating arguably the largest packaging company in the world by sales. “It’s not just about being the largest sustainable packaging company in the world, which is relatively easy,” said Meyer as he accepted his award. “It’s about being the best.”
Despite the challenges on the current market, the executive panel with Harald Ganster (CEO of Hamburger Containerboard), José Soares de Pina (CEO of Altri), António Redondo (CEO of The Navigator Company) and Michał Jarczyński (CEO of Arctic Paper) were solutions- and opportunity-focused in their outlooks.
Jarczyński made it plain that the European pulp and paper industry must find ways to survive in a difficult and changeable environment, describing himself as in a constant state of “curious expectation” when he looked at the news in the morning. Similarly, Ganster described himself his state of skeptical optimism, calling himself a “skeptimist”.
Redondo, while concerned about challenges from incoming tariffs, even a state of trade war, remained focused on the more consistent challenges of high European energy and wood costs and increasing European regulation.
There was a general sense that European industry needed to wake up to its specific challenges and opportunities. Soares de Pina, for example, pointed out that European producers could never reckon with comparison to the massive new pulp mills that can go up in Latin America, but had significant advantages in terms of its customer and consumer base at home. “Europe needs to focus on its local, short supply chains,” he explained.
Interested in getting more insights like this first hand? You can now register to attend the Fastmarkets Forest Products Latin America Conference 2025 in August.
